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In this 2-part workshop we will consider the ‘threshold’ as both a personal or subjective limit[ation], and as a border between that-which-is and that-which-is-not. In part through repertoire born out of Eryka’s present performance project, entitled Make the Brutal Tender, we will attempt to explore the qualifiers tender and brutal corporeally, and learn directly from the body using what is immediately available to us:

Accompanied by sound artist Hanna Elliot (HOGG, Goad Deimos), she will lead us through simple and greatly variable exercises that will allow us to cultivate miniature, sensual (as opposed to verbal) dialogues around comfort and discomfort, pain, impulse, effort, nurture and hopefully, fear. In addition to butoh, activities in the workshops are also culled from her experience in capoeira, flying low, flamenco and play-fighting techniques, and reinterpreted.

Everyone is welcome! These workshops are about exploring your own threshold(s).

Please wear comfortable clothing. We will work barefoot.

*Alternative tasks can always be provided for those who wish to work alone during partnering exercises.

The Threshold:
The brink of being a thing (border, barely)
The limit of a thing (capacity, furthest)

per is a private practice based Yoga Therapist with an educational background in theatre arts. Per’s journey into learning Butoh dance have culminated as a perfect melting pot into which 30 years of his personal movement practice in yoga, tai chi, and bodywork all feel quite at home rubbing against each other. His earliest exposure to performance-visual arts included a fascination with physical theatre, Surrealism, and the writings of legendary artist, such as Jerzy Grotowski and Antonin Artaud.

Erez’s personal work in wellness has served him as a deep dive into the tantra of engaging our human bodies as a living intrapersonal, interpersonal, and impersonal experience– to be shared– through rituals of conscious movement. He has personally found that in these rituals, creative friction/frustration often catches fire, setting ablaze old notions that would separate healing from art, distinguish the body from the mind, or elevate a “higher self” beyond some mere mundane existence commonly experienced.

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Body ResonanceThe body as a receptacle of time.A dance of metamorphosis inevitably appears.

The main focus of this workshop is a conscious research in the unification of our body/mind/soul, so that we can deeply enjoy the intrinsic process of metamorphosis through the spirit of dance. Through a continuous exploration of our past collective memories, we can strike a vein of abundant creative resources, enriching the essence of our life.

Body resonance is a key to opening up the doors of an ever-changing world inside and outside ourselves, which helps the body to unfold its secrets, holding them up until they shine and tremble. Everything is in resonance with each other. Through a dialogue with our body, we can learn to be moved by inner and outer forces, thus realizing we are a part of the Universe.

Butoh Body
Sunday Feb 18, 12-2pm1474 N. Milwaukee Ave.
$15

“How are our ancestors held and released in our body? Ancestries of plants, animals, and humans.” Mitsu

Mitsu’s class will draw from Butoh, contemporary dance, and
experimental theater, exploring the connection with body, unconscious
and imagery.

The class will focus on body-weather, Noguchi, mythical creatures and
sultry hands through guided imagery and structured improvisation.
All levels welcome and please wear comfortable clothing.

Mitsu Salmon creates original performance and dance work. She studied Butoh and has been part of a Butoh company, Ima Tenko and Kiraza, for 3 years in Japan. She studied dance and experimental theater in New York and Berlin for a number of years and has performed and taught workshops internationally. She has performed solo work at places such Links Hall, HCL, Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Highways Performance Space and internationally at Hebbel Am Uffer, the Berlin Performance Art Festival, London Performance Art Festival and Urbanguild in Kyoto, Japan. Learn more on www.mitsusalmon.com.

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Madison-Chicago
Two evenings of live art (a mix of sound and movement based performance) celebrating the simultaneous absurdity and exhilaration of an insignificant act. The possibility of doing nothing. To explore strength in vulnerability, being our incongruous selves, recognizing our obtuse nature. Bubbling to the surface and being loud to root in embodiment.

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Based on the assumptions of various cultural traditions and neuroscience, this workshop aims at awakening old trans-generational memories buried in our bodies and let our bodies narrate it with its own gestures. Our focus lies hereby on our center, the enteric nervous system controlling our bowels, which acts like our brains autonomously. In order to deeply connect with ourselves and our dancing partners through our collective unconscious, we employ Katsugen Undo exercises, fundamental floor work from contact improvisation, atomic shakes and other techniques.

“There are as many ways to do butoh as there are flowers in the world.”

This month it’s happening Saturday, February 24th 6:30pm-8:30pm, but this is a regularly scheduled event at the Japanese Culture Center. The two hour workshop focuses on the method developed by one of the founders of Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata and is taught by Holly Chernobyl, transformer and instigator of dark matter. This method of exploration is firmly grounded in the body, utilizes imagery, and prioritizes form over feeling.

Class is $15.00

This workshop has a limited number of spaces available! Please register ASAP through the JCC office by emailing info@japaneseculturecenter.com or by calling the office directly.

Wear clothes that are easy to move in! Bring a water bottle. This workshop is open to all levels and abilities. Total newbies especially welcome!
From Holly: I am committed to creating an environment which is inclusive of many lived experiences and many abilities. That said, the center is not ADA accessible, unfortunately. Many apologies. This may change in the future.

Holly Chernobyl is a body-based performance artist. Holly has presented work in many Chicago spaces such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Links Hall, and Dfb Gallery. Her work has also been performed in Seattle at Velocity Dance Center, Brooklyn at JACK, and shown in Boston, Berlin, the UK, and Quebec. She continues to create solo pieces and collaborate with a talented array of Chicago artists. In 2016, she held four artist residencies, in rural Finland, Wisconsin, Germany, and at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Back in Chicago from Battles #1: Ground Work, Mari Osanai’s workshop focuses on Noguchi Taiso combined with the influences of her early training in Tai Chi, western dance methods, traditional folk dance in Aomori, Japan (her birthplace), and the connection between one’s thoughts and sensation of weight. Noguchi Taiso (Water Body movement) has been widely appreciated and incorporated/integrated into Butoh movement practice. Osanai’s approach to movement research and exploration begins with a heightened awareness of gravity’s influence on the body and the body’s connection with the center of the earth.

Mari Osanai is an independent dancer, choreographer, Noguchi Taiso teacher. She is based in Aomori, Japan. She has performed and given workshops in the United States, Canada, Greece.

Exercises in the workshop train the body to embrace its weight and heighten its sensitivity to move from its most relaxed and receptive state. Starting with images, such as washing the body with water, air, sunlight, workshop participants will discover the body’s vital energies rooted in its inherent hydrodynamics. Movement and form result as participants ingest imagery inside their bodies and allow the changes to shift the body’s interior.

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Led by Ginger Krebs

Typically on First Wednesdays, 7:30-9:00pmNext Classes: March 7, April 4, May 2, and June 6 at Volta Performing Arts, 2142 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago 60647 $10/class

In these butoh-inspired movement classes we’ll work with specific pressure points (throat, jugular, sternum, femoral artery, instep…) and the twin impulses to protect (make a beetle of oneself), and to roll over and show your belly. We’ll also experiment with breath, “porousness” and yielding to gravity in order to invite swooping and acceleration, on the one hand, and steady, continuous movement, on the other. All skill levels welcome!

Ginger Krebs is a dancemaker, performer, and visual artist whose work has been shown recently in Chicago at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Loyola University, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hyde Park Art Center, and site-specifically at a traffic island in Wicker Park. Much of her movement suggests potential energy: the quivering of a body managing, defying, preparing for, or avoiding, rather than progressing decisively through space. Some inspirations for her new project, Escapes and Reversals, include wrestling, drone warfare, Swan Lake, and an instructional video that explains how to debone a chicken. Krebs is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Performance and Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

TSUCHIMitsu Salmon
Tsuchi is a solo interdisciplinary performance piece. It draws from Mitsu’s great- grandfather’s experience of immigrating from Japan to Hawaii as a farmer and then becoming his dream of becoming a high-end waiter. The piece delves into and obscures his life and then branches out to the stories of Mitsu’s. The work explores questions of family and travel through Butoh, contemporary, dance, and everyday movements with music and text. Awarded best collaborative multimedia dance performance and Top 5 best emerging dancer performances from Newcity 2015.

About the Artists:
MITSU SALMON creates original performance and visual works, which fuse multiple disciplines. Salmon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. In 2005 she graduated from NYU where she majored in Experimental Theater.
She has performed solo work at places such Performance Space 122, Dance Theater Workshop, Highways Performance Space and internationally at Hebbel Am Uffer (Berlin) Central Saint Martins (London), and Urbanguild (Kyoto). She has participated in the Asquared Asian American Performance Festival in Chicago, the Berlin Performance Art Festival, and Act Art London Performance Art Festival. She has been awarded artists residencies at Earthdance in Massachettes, Oxbow in Michigan, Tsung Yeh in Taiwan and Villa Pandan Harum in Bali, Indonesia. In Chicago, she has been awarded residencies through High Concept Lab, the Cultural Center, and Links Hall. www.mitsusalmon.com

MICHAEL SAKAMOTO is an interdisciplinary artist active in dance, theatre, media and photography and one of the leading butoh-based performers in the USA. Dedicated to nurturing intercultural dialogue and cultural sustainability through performative and visual methodologies, Michael creates choreographic and narrative performances, media works and photo essays designed to challenge audience assumptions and reveal diverse experiences across geography, language and social boundaries. His works have been presented in 14 countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America, including at REDCAT, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Dance Center of Columbia College (2016), TACT/Fest Osaka, UCLA Fowler Museum and many others. He is currently touring: “Flash”, a butoh/hip-hop duet with acclaimed choreographer Rennie Harris; “Soil”, a dance theater trio with Southeast Asian dancers; and “blind spot”, an intermedia solo performance exploring intellectual property censorship and corporate militarism. Michael is also writing a book project, “An Empty Room: Butoh Performance and the Social Body in Crisis” for Wesleyan University Press.

CHRISTOPHER JETTE is a curator of lovely sounds, creating work as a composer and new media artist. His creative work explores the artistic possibilities at the intersection of human performers/creators and technological tools. Christopher’s research details his technical and aesthetic investigations and explores technology as a physical manifestation of formalized human constructs. A highly collaborative artist, he has created works that involve dance, theater, websites, electronics, food, toys, typewriters, cell phones, instrument design and good ol’ fashioned wood and steel instruments. In addition to creating concert music, Christopher explores Creative Placemaking through site-specific and interactive work as a core-four member of the Anchorage based Light Brigade. He was the 2015-16 Interdisciplinary Grant Wood Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Iowa and currently serves as Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.